


Koev Halev

by CatastrophicallyInLoveWithBooks



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, First Time, Just angst, Oral Sex, Smut, depression tw, nessian angst, sad sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 02:03:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10866720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatastrophicallyInLoveWithBooks/pseuds/CatastrophicallyInLoveWithBooks
Summary: Koev Halev (Hebrew) = identifying with the suffering of another so closely that one hurts oneself, that one’s heart aches.She could see every emotion he was feeling written clearly on his beautiful face. She could feel every emotion he was feeling and it broke her heart when she realised that he wanted to help her, that he had an unwavering conviction that he could help her come back from this dark place she was in. It broke her heart to see that even after all he’d witnessed he didn’t understand that there was nothing he could do to help. There was nothing no one could do to help. She was too broken, too damaged, too far gone to recover. She was hopeless.





	Koev Halev

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be a steamy smutty Nessian shower sex fic and somewhere along the way it took a dark turn and became angsty Nessian sad sex. I apologise. Comments/reviews are always welcome. Enjoy!

The house was shaking. Cassian jolted upright in bed as he felt the bed shuddering beneath him and heard the weapons displayed on the walls clanking together loudly. He was completely disoriented for a few seconds before his training kicked in and he stood up and surveyed his surroundings. He would have thought it was an earthquake, had he not smelt the tangy scent of magic in the air, had he not felt a powerful tug on the string tied to his ribcage which instantly told him what was wrong. _Nesta._

He quickly pulled on a pair of trousers, opened his door and strode towards her room on the other end of the hallway, catching a few trinkets which were about to fall off the shelves on his way. Elain poked her head out of her room, her eyes wide.

“What’s -” she started but stopped as she realised where Cassian was heading.

He said nothing as he passed by her. He opened the door to Nesta’s room and the magic hit him square in the chest like a blast of cold air. He could feel her terror so strongly down the bond now that for a second he felt as if he were stuck in her nightmare as well. Three long strides was all it took for him to be at Nesta’s side on the bed, gripping her shoulders in an attempt to rouse her. Her whole body was shaking and her skin was slick with sweat, plastering her hair and her thin nightgown to her slim body. The moment he touched her, Nesta started thrashing and muttering a broken string of ‘No’s. Her face was crumpled in despair and it broke Cassian’s heart to see pure, undiluted fear so clearly etched onto her features. The house was shaking more violently now, the wooden floors groaning and squeaking and Nesta’s magic had turned the air heavy and thick, almost unbreathable. From the corner of his eye, he could see Elain, still standing in the corridor, worriedly watching everything.

“Nesta,” he said gently but not quietly, her name a prayer on his lips. He received no response other than a broken wordless cry that escaped past her lips at the sound of his voice. She continued to thrash but her hands found his forearms and gripped his flesh with all her might. Not to push him away – he realised, but to anchor herself to him, as if he were a lifeline and she was trying not to drown.

 _“Nesta!”_ he shouted more desperately now. A wave of Nesta’s magic crashed around them, knocking objects off the nightstand and shelves and slamming the door but it didn’t touch him. She went utterly still beneath him, but her face looked just as agonised, her body paralysed by whatever horrors she was experiencing and her hands still gripped his arms, knuckles now bone white. “Nesta,” he pleaded cupping her cheek. “Nesta.”

He brought down his mental shields, the ones Rhys taught him how to control and groped for that bond between them. He wasn’t a daemati and the bond was a fragile, feeble thing that he knew Nesta was still unaware of so he couldn’t reach her mind but he tried his best to send comforting, calming waves toward her. _You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re safe_. He repeated the words to her in his mind like a mantra until at last, with a breathless gasp, Nesta opened her eyes.

“It’s okay. It was just a nightmare. You’re safe,” Cassian told her in a soothing voice. Her eyes were wild and unfocused and her body was still just as tense as it had been in her sleep. He moved a bit to the side to give her space and slowly unlatched her fingers from his forearms and gripped them gently in his hand instead. Her breathing was coming in short shallow pants and he patiently waited for her to calm down, while rubbing small circles on the back of her hand and murmuring words of comfort. She seemed utterly broken by whatever horrors she had been forced to experience in her mind. Perhaps she had relived moments from the war: the dread of finding out Elain had been captured, seeing her father killed right in front of her eyes, facing the King of Hybern alone while he had been powerless to do anything…

Eventually her body slackened and her breathing evened out and she turned and curled on her side, facing towards him. Her eyes kept that haunted, faraway look as she blankly stared at the wall, and Cassian couldn’t help but think that it was worse than if she had been sobbing. She still hadn’t said anything or made any move to acknowledge him.

“Nesta?” he asked tentatively, trying to get her to look at him. But she didn’t even blink, continuing to stare straight ahead, shadows flickering in her eyes. “This is real. You’re home. You’re safe here,” he promised but he knew the words did not hold the same weight they once did. He didn’t even know if ‘home’ was the right word to use. He assumed that her home was the estate in the woods which had been destroyed in the wake of Hybern’s attack. He could only hope that she would one day consider Velaris her home but for now he knew that wasn’t the case. “You’re safe. Elain’s safe. Feyre’s safe,” he tried again.

At the mention of her sisters, her eyes slid to him but her face remained devoid of any emotion. It took everything in Cassian not to crumple to the ground at the agony behind her eyes. He realised that while everyone could see that Nesta had a harder time adjusting to life after the war, no one had really figured out just how much everything had affected her. No one noticed how everything they had all gone through still haunted her every single day and how out of all of them, Nesta still hadn’t found a way to move on. He had given her space. He had thought she needed space and time to sort out her feelings and come to terms with what had happened and now he couldn’t help but feel guilty that he didn’t see that leaving her with nothing but her own thoughts to keep her company was the worst thing he could have done. She had become a ghost, a shell of who she once was and everyone had been too busy dealing with their own demons to realise.

He picked her up, searching in her eyes for some kind of sign of protest but he was greeted with nothing but that vacant, tormented stare. He took her to the bathroom and set her on her feet in the wide, open shower, fit to accommodate Illyrian wings. He hoped that the splash of water would be enough to break her out of her stupor, or at least soothe her enough so she could go back to sleep. He watched her to see if she could hold herself upright and only turned his back to her to turn the shower on when he was satisfied that her legs wouldn’t give out. He turned the water on and stepped back, letting her choose whether to step under the warm stream.

She raised her head and looked towards him, then to the shower. She slowly started peeling off her nightgown from her sweat slicked skin and dropped it to the floor, standing completely bare for the first time before him. His eyes didn’t stray from her face for one second as she stepped into the spray of water and turned to face him, looking at the ground. She wrapped her arms around herself tightly as if trying to hold herself together.

“Nesta,” he murmured, the word conveying everything he was feeling: the concern, the guilt, the heartbreak. He brushed her hair from her forehead and lightly tipped her head back to look into her eyes.

***

She was broken. The war had broken her completely and she knew there was no way she was ever going to be whole again. She had thought she could get through this at first. For Feyre and Elain. She had wanted nothing more than to leave all the death and pain and suffering of war behind but with each passing day she realised she was fighting a losing battle…

She let Cassian tilt her head up and finally looked into his eyes. She could see every emotion he was feeling written clearly on his beautiful face. She could feel every emotion he was feeling and it broke her heart when she realised that he wanted to help her, that he had an unwavering conviction that he could help her come back from this dark place she was in. It broke her heart to see that even after all he’d witnessed he didn’t understand that there was nothing he could do to help. There was nothing anyone could do to help. She was too broken, too damaged, too far gone to recover. She was hopeless.

And it was the hope that she saw in his eyes that had her reaching out and pulling him beneath the spray of water with her. His body stiffened as she reached on her tip toes, placed her hands on his shoulders and brought her mouth to his. She pressed her naked body into his, her breasts flush with his bare chest and kissed him while he remained unmoving next to her.

“Please,” she murmured between kisses. “Please,” and her voice broke on the second word. Cassian’s hands instantly cupped her face and his mouth moved against hers. He was being careful and gentle, not matching the intensity of her own kisses, trying to get her to slow down, trying to make sure she wanted this. If she hadn’t been so ruined, she would have enjoyed his gentleness. She would have loved the careful way he touched her, the slow kisses that perhaps could have helped soothe her, the loving words that would have helped heal her. If only she hadn’t already been too far gone…

She slipped her hands to his back, to the nape of his neck and pulled him closer. “Please,” she begged again and at last he relented. He slipped his tongue past the seam of her lips, his kisses finally matching the intensity she desired. He brought one of his hands to her waist and moved his hand in a gentle caress down her ribs - still too gentle for her. She guided his hand to her breast and tilted her head back as he started kissing down the side of her neck. “Please,” she begged again, like a broken record.

“What do you want, Nesta?” he asked, stepping back to look at her. His voice was laced with concern. “What do you need?” She didn’t dare look him in the eye so she watched the rivulets of water streaming down his dark glistening skin instead. She felt so much love, so much anguish and heartache coming from the mating bond that she tried with all her might to ignore that she felt like she couldn’t breathe. She closed her eyes and hoped the water soaking them both would be enough to hide the tears that slipped from her eyes.

“I need a distraction,” she said and she wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not. Cassian didn’t question it, though, and she felt another tear escape at the thought that he never, not even for a second, thought that she might love him back. She didn’t know if she did. She might have, had things gone differently. She cared about him and once she had even dared think she loved him but that had been while the war was still raging. That had been before she was stuck in this place where she couldn’t feel anything.

He kissed a path down from her jaw, to her neck, to her collarbone, lingering on that spot right above her heart before he finally took one of her nipples in his mouth. She sighed at the feeling and threaded her fingers through the wet hair at the nape of his neck. His hand was massaging her other breast, pinching and rolling her nipple between his fingers and her breathing started getting heavier. He moved on from her breasts and kneeled before her. He kissed and licked his way down her abdomen before finally placing a kiss just at the apex of her thighs.

She looked down at him and saw that he was aroused as well but his eyes were just as sad as they had been before. The outright adoration and yearning in his eyes, intertwined with the profound melancholy had her averting her eyes to avoid his gaze. He took a finger and slowly dragged it through her folds, spreading the slickness he found there and she willed her body to get lost in the feeling. He took her leg and carefully placed it over his shoulder, mindful of his wings and grabbed her hips to steady her. He growled softly at the sight of her spread out before him but she knew it was mostly for her benefit. She knew he wasn’t enjoying this as much as he would have, had the circumstances been different. She knew this was as far away from what he had imagined as possible. She knew he was trying to provide a distraction – he was giving her exactly what she had told him she needed regardless of what he felt and she appreciated that. So she titled her head back and moaned as he finally brought his mouth onto her, determined to show him she was enjoying it – for his benefit.

He started off slow, ravishing her with long broad strokes until she was panting and then he started flicking the sensitive bundle of nerves between her thighs with the tip of his tongue until she was gasping for air. The deadly mix had her head spinning and her moans weren’t just for his benefit anymore. She struggled to push the darkness swirling in her mind away and focus only on the feeling of his tongue on her, on his hands on her hips, that small bit of contact between their bodies acting like an anchor as if Cassian was trying to keep her from floating away back into that dark abyss with the fervour of his touch alone. He struggled to keep her hips from moving with one hand as he brought the other one down and slowly pushed a finger inside of her. Nesta buckled her hips at the feeling, desperate for more, and he quickly complied and added another.

A small still sane part of her mind marvelled at his skill – the kind that most likely only came with a lot of practice – and she was surprised to see how quickly he had managed to bring her to the edge. Her body was tense, every muscle taut and her thoughts were muddled. She didn’t know what she was feeling except that she was feeling everything, all at once. Cassian increased his pace, quickly slipping his fingers in and out of her while sucking and licking at Nesta’s clit. Her fingers gripped his hair and now she was holding onto him as heartily as he was holding onto her. He curled his fingers inside of her and hit that spot that had her legs shaking until her back arched off the tiles and she shattered, utterly silent before gasping out a choked breath.

She slumped onto Cassian’s shoulder as he stood up from between her legs, spent and slowly coming down from her high while he said nothing, and only held her in his arms. They stood like that for a couple of minutes, her breathing slowly returning to normal until he reached over and turned the water off. As the buzz slowly wore off, she felt that all familiar numbness enveloping her body like a heavy blanket and her fingers tightened on his shoulders in dread. It hadn’t been enough to pull her out of chasm she had fallen into after the war. _He_ hadn’t been enough. But for a precious few seconds he had got her to feel _something_. And sex was a bad coping mechanism, she was aware – it was possibly the worst but Cauldron damn her twice, she had to try.

She knew she should feel ashamed. She knew she should feel guilty for making him do this but she felt nothing but sheer desperation, a sliver of hope that maybe it would work again. Maybe he would be able to make her feel again. To make her whole again. So she ignored the way his body stiffened before her as she tugged his wet trousers down his legs and started kissing him again.

“Nesta, don’t -” he started but she kissed the words off his lips. She took his length in her hand and slowly pumped him until he was hard and ready in her hand and she saw it on his face how much he despised the way his body reacted to her touch even now when he wanted to comfort her, to hold her and heal her instead of this. But this was some form of comfort too, after all.

“Please,” she begged once more and while the word had once been foreign to her, she was too desperate now to care that she was seeking his charity, his pity. “I need this,” she implored, her voice breaking again. “I need you.”

***

Cassian could swear that he heard his heart shatter in his chest at the sheer anguish and panic in her voice. He hated himself for doing this but he knew he would have walked to the end of the earth if she asked him. He was powerless to refuse her and if this – however dark and twisted it was – brought some shred of comfort to her, he would do it in a heartbeat.

So he picked her up and took her to the bedroom, laying her gently on the bed, their wet bodies soaking the sheets. The bed was the one thing he had to do more for himself than for her - he couldn’t stand the thought of taking her against a wall for the first time. She trailed her fingers down his body, still not looking into his eyes and he didn’t know if it was a curse or a hidden blessing that he didn’t have to face the woe he’d find in her gaze. He settled himself between her thighs and felt his mind abhor every move and his body relish every touch. She spread her legs wider for him, her body tense and desperate and instead of pleading with him again, she finally looked him in the eyes.

He wanted to refuse her. He wanted to walk away and never think that he had been close to doing this ever again. But the look in her eyes broke him and knew that he couldn't. For her, he would do this. For his mate, he would make himself do the same thing he once did to his friend centuries ago. He would relive the shame and guilt and horror and experience it again only this time much worse. In a sense, he had freed Mor then and he could only hope that this would help free Nesta from her demons as well.

As he pushed into her, incredibly slowly and gently to make sure he wouldn't hurt her, he thought of all of the ways he had imagined this going. He imagined them both being happy and well and newly mated. He imagined Nesta smiling at him. He imagined her accepting him, letting him help her leave all her ghosts behind, loving him back just as much as he loved her. But he saw now that she was fractured inside and only her skin kept all the pieces together and he thought that if he was willing to do this, he must have been thoroughly damaged as well. As he felt Nesta brace herself as her maidenhead yielded to him, he felt something break beyond repair inside him too and all the air in his lungs left him in a long exhale as he brought his head down and propped his forehead on her collarbone. He stilled inside her, waiting for her to adjust, ready to stop completely if she so wished - begging her in his mind to ask him to stop – but she didn’t.

“Move,” she sobbed as she gripped his back. “Move. Please.” He didn’t know if she was crying because of the pain, or because of whatever was going on in her head but he obeyed. He slowly thrusted in and out of her and forced himself to tune out her cries – he couldn’t bear to hear them. He hated himself with every fiber of his being for doing this even if he knew it was what she wanted. He closed his eyes and imagined a different version of events once more. A version in which he hadn’t failed Nesta over and over again. Perhaps if she hadn’t been turned into a fae she would have been happy now. Perhaps if he had been stronger that final day of the war when they had faced the King, she wouldn’t have had to witness her father being killed before her eyes, she wouldn’t have had to witness her sister drive a knife through his throat, she wouldn’t have had to be this empty shell of a person now. He started moving faster and poured every bit of frustration and grief and pain into his movements. From the way she scratched at his back, he knew he wasn’t being rough enough for her but he also knew that if he let himself go and hurt her, he would never forgive himself. So he tuned out her cries – moans or sobs, he didn’t know what they were anymore – and he thrust into her until he came hot and thick and shameful inside her.

He collapsed next to her and stared at the ceiling until his breathing evened out. Nesta was utterly silent beside him and he didn’t know whether to be glad she’d stopped crying or be worried that she’d gone back into that unfeeling hollow state. He sat up, feeling just as hollow inside as she looked and grabbed his trousers and put them back on so he could leave. He didn’t look at her as she slowly curled on her side and stared unblinkingly out the window. He simply walked to the door and stepped into the hall, closing it quietly behind him.

He walked back to his room in a daze and when he finally shut the door with a click his knees gave out and he collapsed to the floor. He put his head in his hands, forehead bowed onto the wooden floor and felt tears rolling down his cheeks. He didn’t have the strength to get up. He didn’t have the strength to do anything but lie there and grieve – grieve over the death of a part of himself he had lost tonight. And grieve over Nesta, as if she had already been dead.


End file.
